Computers & Internet & Linux & Music & Review & Software Wojtek on 18 Nov 2006 03:29 am
Internet radio stations rock!
OK it’s time to make a pause on all (well, 2 for now to be exact) posts regarding the blog’s technical side, let’s get back to some of the main topics …
For some time I’ve been using Linux (for those of you who don’t know what Linux is: it’s another kind of operating system. To put it in a nutshell: consider it as a more “open” Windows), the well known Debian distribution to be exact. I’ve configured all the multimedia applications (music/video players, etc.), but I still lacked something. Then, while skipping through the available software, I stumbled upon the piece of software called “streamtuner”. That’s when I re-discovered internet radio stations…
For all of you Linux-using music lovers out there, I recommend the streamtuner software (it should be available in most distros in your package management systems and if not then here’s the program’s homepage). What does it do ? It’s author describes it simply as “a stream directory browser”. And that’s what it exactly does. It shows us a listing of radio streams from the most popular stream directories (Shoutcast, Live365 and Xiph to name a few) according to a chosen stream category or by using the built-in directory search tools. When you choose the stream of a station that you’d like to listen to, you simply select it and push the “Tune in” button on the menu bar and presto! it runs Xmms (most popular mp3 player for Linux, arguably kinda like Winamp under Windows) and it automatically plays the stream which you’ve selected. It also allows you to make bookmarks of your favourite streams, similar to the mechanism which you find in web browsers.
Last, but not least, coupled with the “streamripper” program (here’s it’s homepage, it’s also available for Windows), you can directly command it to “rip” a stream, which means that it saves the songs which are fed through the stream as mp3’s on your hard disk. This is a great and useful tool if you find a good station with a cool DJ and want to record his program for later re-listening or when you’ve gotta go somewhere, but don’t want to miss your favourite radio talkshow (just like back in the old cassette recording days …). Streamripper doesn’t need to coupled with streamtuner, Xmms, Winamp or other player, so it’s not obligatory to listen to the stream while recording.
Winamp has a tool similar to that of streamtuner, although as far as I’m aware of it’s only limited to the Shoutcast directory (which is by the way owned by the guys behind Winamp).
In order to find a radio station stream you can also simply go to the stream directory’s website (I’ve put some of the major directories URLs on the Links page). Then you only need a player (Winamp, Foobar, Xmms) in order to connect to and play the chosen radio stream.
About 6 months ago, I’ve read about a new music radio project on the Internet called “The Music Genome Project“. It’s main goal is to help people discover new music, based on the music that they like. It came forth with the Pandora Internet Radio, which is a pretty genuine website and radio indeed. It simply asks you the name of your favourite band or song and in a few moments it creates your own, personal radio station, consisting of songs which are similar in style and genre to the band/song you entered. Later, while playing the songs (it plays right out of your browser and doesn’t need an external player software) you can decide whether you like a selected song or not and depending on your decision the system remembers and tries to either continue or stop serving music similar to that song. You can also bookmark the songs into a kind of “favourites” page, although later you can’t just choose the song in that page. While playing you can’t rewind/fast forward the song or go back to the previous song. The one thing you can do here is to skip the song that’s playing right now, but that’s also somewhat limited (it skips automatically if you “decide” that you don’t like it). It’s a great tool if you get the urge to find something new to listen to, but don’t want to go around asking record shop owners for music similar to your own tastes.
OK, that’s that about internet radio streams for now. From time to time I’ll post links to my personal favourite radio station streams.